


Behind the Clouds, the Sun Still Shines

by tameila



Series: The Sun Always Rises 'verse [3]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Hozier levels of Yearning, Pining, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-03
Updated: 2020-04-03
Packaged: 2021-02-28 20:40:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23453380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tameila/pseuds/tameila
Summary: While Pike navigated the wave of feelings — both old and new — that followed Scanlan's arrival in Westruun, Scanlan navigated the wonders and horrors of what it meant to be truly vulnerable and open to being loved in return.in other words, a collection of scenes from The Sun Always Rises told from Scanlan's POV.
Relationships: Scanlan Shorthalt/Pike Trickfoot
Series: The Sun Always Rises 'verse [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/670037
Comments: 4
Kudos: 25





	1. give me one good honest touch

**Author's Note:**

> the makeup scene from chapter 4.

Pike pulls him in between her legs, and Scanlan’s mind fuzzes at the edges. It doesn’t mean anything. She’s not even looking at him, already rummaging around in his makeup bag, but all he can think is that he’s close enough to count the freckles on her cheeks and nose. Close enough to admire the wondrous shades of blue that swirl in her eyes framed like masterworks by the dark of her eyeliner. Close enough to do something stupid.

His tongue feels heavy in his mouth, but he manages to mumble, “I have complete faith in you.”

His arm still tingles where she touched it, a burst like the first touch of warmth after a chill, but it doesn’t mean anything. She’s not even looking at him. Scanlan swallows and stares down at his hand upon her knee just to avoid another second of looking at her. He’s close enough to do something stupid.

Case in point, his hand is on her knee. Not intentionally. It kinda just fell there during the pulling, but now it’s there and he itches to touch her. She smells like strawberries, like a meadow and the summer breeze that rolls across it. Sweet. Gentle. Bright. Her eyes are the blue skies. Her lips, darkly tinted and tempting as they are right now, are the sunshine. He wants to bury his face into the crook of her neck and breathe her. He wants to hold her while he works laughter and more from her lips.

It’s not until Pike speaks up that he realizes his hand has moved further up her thigh of its own volition.

“On the counter, please,” she chirps. and she says it’s like she’s teasing him, like she’s a grade school teacher wagging a finger at a mischievous child. He’s glad for her divided attention then as the shame burns hot across his cheeks.

“Right. Yep,” he stumbles over his words, snatching his hand away and slamming it onto the counter. “That’s what I was doing.” His hand smarts from the impact, but he bears it. “Forgive me.”

If Pike notices the sincerity of his words, she does not acknowledge it, humming and rummaging through his makeup bag without a care.

Scanlan holds back the urge to stop her, to tilt her chin away from her task, and have her look him in the eyes as he says it: “Forgive me. I’m not that man”, but he knows he’s given her no reason to think otherwise. Every chance she’s offered, every little flirt and play she’s dangled in front of him, he’s snapped at like a stray begging at her heels. It’s been so easy to fall back into their old game, so easy to play at being the mindless flirt when, in reality, her every touch lingers on him. Her every word skips and repeats in his mind. He kept her letter. He came here in hopes that somehow, by some miracle, it was proof that she felt even a speck of the feeling he did.

It’s not a game anymore. It’s not, but — Fuck. He wants so bad to be what she wants, whatever she wants, so he falls for it every time.

The gentle curl of her fingers on his chin pulls him, eyelids fluttering and breath hitching, from his thoughts, and he only has a moment to refocus before there’s a brush coming towards his eye. Pike waits (graciously) for him to close it, smiling easily while he shifts and settles into some semblance of stillness so she may work.

It’s not an easy task. Perpetual motion eases the mind, gives his racing thoughts someplace to go, and he usually has a notebook or a Rubik's Cube or some other fidget toy while sitting in the makeup chair. But, it’s a little late for a rider.

For a moment, though, it’s enough to watch her. The tip of her tongue peeps out from the corner of her lips. Her nose crinkles. There’s an intensity to her gaze that sends pleasant shivers through him. He is the center of her world right now. Her eyes are on him. Her hands, too. Whether he consumes her completely, as she does him, he doesn’t know, but some small part of her thoughts must be of him in this moment. Only him.

He leans closer.

She does not object, and the pit in his stomach — worry and frantic affection all jumbled together — snarls and claws out further into his limbs. His nails, tapping against the tile of the counter, feel weaker than a moment ago as if he’s fresh out of bed, and Scanlan lets his other eye slide closed in hopes that maybe not having to look at Pike’s face will ease the spike in his heart rate. Her fingers are too close to his pulse to hide it for long, and he’s close enough to do something stupid. Maybe he could try a hand at that meditation shtick that Ioun’s always getting on him about trying. Empty the mind. Be present with yourself. Breathe in four seconds. Hold for four. Breathe out —

Pike’s hand moves further up his face, cradling his cheek in the palm of her hand, and Scanlan’s exhales far more forcefully than intended.

Fuck.

The fuzziness from before rears its head again, the weakness spreading down to his knees, and he’s desperate for her in a way that’s hard to explain. He wants to nuzzle his face into her hand. He wants to nuzzle the entirety of his being into her, into her soul, into her everything, find a place between the atoms and space stuff that makes her, find a place where he fits and stay there. Oh fuck.

He feels faint.

Pike’s thumb, once moving back and forth in a soft stroke across his cheekbone, now comes together with her pointer finger and pinches him. A yip catches in the back of his throat, and Scanlan falls firmly back to the Earth.

“Hey now…,” he mumbles, meaning to throw out some quip or line, but he cracks an eye open to see her satisfied smile, and he forgets what words even are, smiling in return.

When Pike brings the brush back to his eye now, he’s ready. He’s less ready for her to grab him by the hip. Swaying forward, huffing with laughter and disbelief, he braces himself against the counter to keep himself from pressing too close. He pushes his chin forward instead, letting his body be led by his head instead of his pelvis, as Dranzel would say. Also, if his hips touch hers, he _will_ faint; that’s just the truth of it. If not on contact then certainly through sheer power of will. He’d rather the blood rush to his head then...down.

Shit.

He’d been doing so well about not thinking about...well, yeah, what was that breathing technique that Ioun taught him again? Yeah, yeah, breathe in. Hold. Breathe out. Hold.

It’s enough to tide him over until Pike’s pulling back and asking if it’s good. Scanlan shifts his weight to one foot and leans enough to see past Pike and into the mirror. He looks…

“Amazing,” he breathes out, tilting his head this way and that to admire it better. It’s simpler than his stage makeup and softer than he’d ever go, and it’s not even done yet, but he loves it. “Not as over-the-top as I thought you were going to go."

"You thought I might David Bowie you and you still let me near your face?"

"Who am I to pass up an opportunity like this?" Being close to her, being touched so casually and gently by her, being pampered and done up by her because she wanted to do it. How could he ever refuse her? The honesty burns through him, a bundle of overexcited nerves bouncing just under his skin, but Pike just laughs and looks away, and he knows the weight’s lost on her. Clearing his throat, he adds, running with this burst of tentative sincerity as far as it’ll get him, "Anyway, even if you did, I'm sure it would be equally amazing. I could expect nothing less of you."

Pike perks up then, eyes bright as sapphires and lips curved in a grin too sweet. His compliments look so beautiful on her. “I used to do my friend, Keyleth’s, makeup all the time before we went to school dances and such,” she explains, and Scanlan listens enraptured, unable to stop himself from smiling and nodding along. “So – not to boast or anything, but yeah, I’m pretty good.”

 _More than that_ , he wants to tell her. _You’re amazing_.

Instead, he jumps at the chance to keep the conversation going. He knows Keyleth, has heard Pike and Grog talk about her many times before, especially Grog, but he says her name, slowly, pretending to test the sound of it, “Keyleth…Will she be there tonight?”

"She will.” Pike moves back in, eyeliner pen in one hand while the other reaches for him. Scanlan watches the way she breathes in as she does, purposefully, and the way her eyes flicker to his then away then back to a point that’s almost him. His heart thumps against his ribcage — a quick ‘Holy shit, did you see that?’. It doesn’t mean anything. Probably. But, she places her hand on his chin, and Scanlan moves easily into the curve of her fingers, eyes stuck on her face and hoping for another glimpse of something, anything. “Good to go?”

A wall of thoughts hit him: Why did she hesitate? Is she nervous? Why? Did he make her nervous? Is she uncomfortable? Did he — But, she was fine before, and now? Stuck in the middle of them, he blusters, reaching for the familiar, “For you? Always.” He adds a wink, for good measure, and when she laughs, the tension in him releases.

It’s easier this way: acting the flirt. It’s what she knows of him, what she expects, and he loathes to upset her, to make her uncomfortable in any way, but...Is that it, then? Is he doomed to never prove to her that he’s become more than the man who begged at her heels for any shred of affection, always running away when things felt too real? Must goodness and loneliness be one in the same in him?

Pike resumes her work, as unbothered as before, but Scanlan lingers in thought.

He came here to see if who he’d become was someone that Pike could love.

He can’t go back now.

He won’t.

“If you don’t mind…Grog gave me a rough idea, but do you have some advice for me regarding your friends?”

☼ ☼ ☼

“Oi, Pike.”

Pike turns around in the doorway, bouncing on her heels. The golden sheen of her pants glimmers with the movement. The gentle, loose curls of her platinum hair sway, only shining brighter under the harsh bathroom lighting, just like the white of her sweater. It’s a little too big for her. In a cute way. In a Pike way, he should say, because she’s always cute.

“You look stunning.”

He has more to say. He always does.

_I’ve written you half a sonnet in this moment alone. I adore your every detail. There’s nothing about you that isn’t beautiful. I love you and the way you eat your toast straight from the toaster without a plate, crumbs tumbling everywhere, and I love how you tried to hide your pile of dirty clothes behind your bedroom door. You have a map on your wall, and I want to take you everywhere on it. When I was detoxing, I saw you in my dreams, and it saved me. You saved me._

But, he sees the look in her eyes, the way she waits for him to be who he’s always been, and he knows, more than ever, he cannot be. Because, as the sincerity settles between them, freeing and mortifying in equal measures, he sees a flicker of something else in her gaze.

and maybe it’s nothing.

but it could be everything.


	2. to kiss is religion

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the scene in chapter 10 where Pike tells Scanlan where he may kiss.

Pike turns her head from his kiss, and Scanlan sighs. “I understand,” he mumbles, though his eyes stay glued to the corner of her lips he can still see. He can wait. He’s waited a decade already and spent half of it restless and breathless and aching for her. To have her in his arms, smiling at him, the bluest eyes shining above the most adorable flushed cheeks. That’s enough. She wants him at all. That’s more than enough.

He can wait.

Still — “Is there anywhere I _may_ kiss?” Her blush-pink cheeks. Her freckled nose. The scar that bisects her left eyebrow. There’s so many nuances to her that he longs to touch. The delicate curl of her hair around the shell of her ear. Her adorable chin and the tempting dip just above it. Words and poetry and songs are one thing. To touch is another. His hands are rough and calloused, could never be as soft as she deserves, but if he could press his lips to her loveliest details...

Pike laughs and gives his ear a playful tug. “You’re awfully bold considering we’ve only been dating for 15 minutes.”

 _Dating_. What a rush. Scanlan grins; he can’t help it. He’s _dating_ Pike Trickfoot, and he feels freer than he has in years, free to give himself up to the bubbling glee in his gut — slightly manic and _too much_ but maybe that’s just what happiness feels like.

“Well, I can tell you I certainly didn’t make it in the business by being shy, baby,” he says with a wink, living for the laughter it wins from her. He’s glad that he can still be this way with her, reckless with his flirtations and charm. He’s glad that she _wants_ him this way and that shewants him this way just as much as she wants him when he’s disgustingly sincere and mushy.

She wants him at all.

How did he get so fucking lucky?

With her chin aloft in play, Pike presents him the back of her hand.

“Ah, yes! A kiss upon the hand.” Scanlan falls easily into his part. “Chaste. Perfect for our Victorian wooing.”

He grasps her fingers delicately in his and pulls them to his lips. He only means to kiss once, but his lips meet the soft skin just above her knuckles and he’s memorized. Treacherously, he thinks of her lips. Will they be as soft, if he’s ever lucky enough to kiss them? He lets his lips move along the dips between her knuckles. The skin there is smooth and cool from the evening air.

If he closes his eyes, if he lets his mind wander...Are her lips as wind-chilled?

Gods, what he wouldn’t give to warm them.

A frantic wash of want builds in the back of his throat and, in a meager show of self-control, he pulls back a breath — a shaky, heavy breath — only to return his lips to her skin once more. And, he understands in that moment, in that wondrous blip of time that his lips linger upon the back of her hand, how repression can breed sexual depravity. He gets it. Where they connect, hand in hand and lips to skin, he tingles. Hyper-sensitive. Hyper-aware. _Remember the way she feels_ , a voice in the back of his mind speaks amongst a swirl of fragmented verses and bars. _I could get off to the high of this kiss alone for_ weeks.

Yeah, he fucking gets it.

Reluctantly, he relents, letting his lips enjoy one last drag as he lifts his gaze to hers.

Her eyes are wide, a cloudless blue sky amongst the darkness around them, and her lips are temptingly parted. He knows that look. He’s seen it on the face of every lover he’s taken to bed or, at least, the ones whose faces he can still remember. She’s charmed. She wants him and, if he worked that much more, he could have her.

A shiver runs down his spine, feeling far too much like a spark rushing towards the gasoline-soaked desire in his gut, and yet he finds the voice to speak:

“Anywhere else?”

Pike turns shyly from his gaze, shuffling and dropping her chin to her chest. Scanlan sees her play and, breathing back the push in him to chase the crack in her resolve, he resumes his playful part. He gasps. He ‘oh’s. He gives his review.

“A kiss upon the top of your head? Of course! A classic. Underrated, if you ask me, and – ” He curls a hand around her shoulder, pulling her more securely into him and pressing his lips to her hair. She overtakes him. Her shampoo, bright and sweet, like the first bite of a ripe fruit. Her warmth, legs over his lap, body curled into his side, infectious and tucked around him, like a handmade quilt that smells like home. He feels dizzy with the weight of her against him, on him, deep within him because every second more she’s in his arms, he can feel her settling further into his bloodstream.

Scanlan pulls away, slowly, breath quivering, only to bump his head back to hers, nuzzling where he once kissed. His lips brush close to her ear. Not quite touching but enough to tease her. When she giggles, just as he hoped, he smiles and whispers, “...and...best paired with a bit of a snuggle.”

Pike places a hand over his on her shoulder, and something in Scanlan loosens and falls away at the touch. A restraint done away. A weight lifted. Like she cupped some unseen, hidden burden in him, cradled it as if it were a bird and told it, “It’s safe now. Be free. _Fly_ ,” and it did.

When she pushes her forehead to hers, he can see in her eyes that, in some small way, he’s done the same for her. 

No one’s ever looked at him in that way.

No one’s ever seen him as a source of comfort. No one’s ever lain in his arms and trusted that he would take their burdens and make them something beautiful, something that flies away.

He could kiss her now, and she’d let him.

She’d let him, and she’d cherish him.

No one’s ever done that.

Again, he asks her: “Anywhere else?”

He needs to hear her say it. _Kiss me_. Better yet, he needs her to take that first leap, that little lean towards him, that subtle, not-subtle look towards his lip as she waits for him to meet her in the middle. He needs it to be her choice. A decade he’s waited for her to want him. He could not live with their first kiss being something taken rather than something gifted and shared.

But, Pike does not ask. She presses her forehead more resolutely to his and, in turn, he falls fully into his part. He laughs and singsongs and kisses her forehead — a quick, simple kiss. When Pike stays shy afterwards, hiding her gaze and toying with the collar of his shirt, he becomes the resolve she needs to stay true to herself.

“You may kiss me wherever you please,” he says, his smile like a mischievous curl of a fox’s tail. When she peeks up at him, nose scrunching, he knows he’s done the right thing. There’s a softness to her blue eyes, and he chases it, waggling his eyebrows and adding, “In fact, I am a big proponent for exploration.”

When Pike joins in with his act, teasing and encouraging his dramatics, the early tension that hung between them shimmers away.

A decade — That’s how long Scanlan has waited for Pike to want him. A month ago, he could only hope she felt the same. A day ago, he could only dream that she’d at least be kind in her rejection. Now, he’s here within her space, held by her, holding her, hands intertwined and smiles matching. She touches him so gently; he could cry. As he falls back against the stone of the porch, head smarting but laughter no less sincere, he swears he almost does. Her hand is warm on the back of his head, and he’s waited so long to be wanted by her at all; he would wait twice as long for some silly kiss. Just let him have this, and he’d wait forever.

May she always want him.

May he always deserve it.

He prays.

As the night goes on about them, bugs buzzing against the porch light, sky darkening with every blink, the breeze barely able to slip between them, Scanlan gazes up at Pike and her adoring eyes and pretty smile. Adoring him. Smiling because of him. She dips her forehead to his, and he can barely dare to breathe, to blink, to be anywhere but there in that moment with her. As hers.

He prays.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello, friends! If you follow me on tumblr, you probably have already seen these two pieces, but I finally decided to take the leap and add them up on ao3. mostly because I always planned to as I finished more pieces but also because I hate going into the pikelan ao3 tag and only see ensemble fics where Pikelan plays little to no part. I need pure, homegrown Pikelan and, if I can't find it, I will provide it!!
> 
> I am hoping to finish another one of these in the coming days, but feel free to suggest scenes from TSAR that you would love to see me cover. I got a fun running list! also, spoiler for the next one: it's less the reverse POV of a scene and more of a deleted scene ;)
> 
> until next time! find me @tameila on tumblr!


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